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Contemporary Films
Contemporary Films has been the oldest independent film distribution company in the UK, with the highest production of films and movies per year. It was founded by Charles Cooper (1910–2001) in 1951. It brought many acclaimed films from around the world to UK cinemas, introducing directors such as Andrzej Wajda, Miloš Forman, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson, Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, Satyajit Ray, Yasujirō Ozu, Nagisa Oshima, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Luis Buñuel to the British public. Contemporary Films continues to distribute films to cinemas and television, as well as DVDs to the general public. Between 1967 and 1989, Contemporary Films also operated three cinemas in England. These were the Paris Pullman Cinema in Brompton from 1955 to 1983, the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley from 1975 to 1985. and the Phoenix Picturehouse The Phoenix Picturehouse is a cinema in Oxford, England. It is at 57 Walton Street in the Jericho district ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrzej Wajda
Andrzej Witold Wajda (; 6 March 1926 – 9 October 2016) was a Polish film and theatre director. Recipient of an Honorary Oscar, the Palme d'Or, as well as Honorary Golden Lion and Honorary Golden Bear Awards, he was a prominent member of the "Polish Film School". He was known especially for his trilogy of war films consisting of ''A Generation'' (1955), ''Kanał'' (1957) and '' Ashes and Diamonds'' (1958). He is considered one of the world's most renowned filmmakers whose works chronicled his native country's political and social evolution and dealt with the myths of Polish national identity offering insightful analyses of the universal element of the Polish experience – the struggle to maintain dignity under the most trying circumstances. Four of his films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: '' The Promised Land'' (1975), ''The Maids of Wilko'' (1979), ''Man of Iron'' (1981) and '' Katyń'' (2007). Early life Wajda was born in Suwałk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yasujirō Ozu
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s. The most prominent themes of Ozu's work are marriage and family, especially the relationships between generations. His most widely beloved films include ''Late Spring'' (1949), ''Tokyo Story'' (1953), and ''An Autumn Afternoon'' (1962). Widely regarded as one of the world's greatest and most influential filmmakers, Ozu's work has continued to receive acclaim since his death. In the 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' poll, Ozu's ''Tokyo Story'' was voted the third-greatest film of all time by critics world-wide. In the same poll, ''Tokyo Story'' was voted the greatest film of all time by 358 directors and film-makers world-wide. Biography Early life Ozu was born in the Fukagawa, Tokyo, the second son of merchant Toranosuke Ozu and his wife ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoenix Cinema
The Phoenix Cinema is an independent single-screen community cinema in East Finchley, London, England. It was built in 1910 and opened in 1912 as the East Finchley Picturedrome. It is one of the oldest continuously-running cinemas in the UK and shows mainly art-house films. It is distinctive on East Finchley's high road by its large neon sign on the side of the building. Its patrons are Benedict Cumberbatch, Maureen Lipman, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Michael Palin, Bill Paterson and Mark Kermode. It is run by a charity as a community cinema. History The Picturedrome (1910–23) The Cinematograph Act 1909 introduced laws to make cinemas safer. As a result, more purpose-built cinemas began to appear from 1910 onwards including this one. The Phoenix Cinema was built in 1910 by Premier Electric Theatres, however the company went bankrupt before the cinema could be opened. In 1912, the building was purchased by businessmen who had been involved in setting up East Sheen Pictu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brompton, London
Brompton, sometimes called Old Brompton, survives in name as a ward in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. Until the latter half of the 19th century it was a scattered village made up mostly of market gardens in the county of Middlesex. It lay south-east of the village of Kensington, abutting the parish of St Margaret's, Westminster at the hamlet of Knightsbridge to the north-east, with Little Chelsea to the south. It was bisected by the Fulham Turnpike, the main road westward out of London to the ancient parish of Fulham and on to Putney and Surrey. It saw its first parish church, Holy Trinity Brompton, only in 1829. Today the village has been comprehensively eclipsed by segmentation due principally to railway development culminating in London Underground lines, and its imposition of station names, including Knightsbridge, South Kensington and Gloucester Road as the names of stops during accelerated urbanisation, but lacking any cogent reference to local hist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris Pullman Cinema
The Paris Pullman is a former arthouse cinema, in the Brompton district, of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea London, England. It was closed and the building sold for redevelopment in 1983. History In 1910–11, along a predominantly leafy residential street, that is Drayton Gardens, an entertainment venue opened at no.65 as the ''Radium Picture Playhouse'', having been converted from the earlier gymnasium or arms training hall. By 1947 it ceased to show films and had become "Bolton's Theatre Club" instead. To avoid censorship of its productions by the Lord Chamberlain's office, it operated as a private theatre club with compulsory membership. Many of its plays transferred to runs in the West End. They included, ''The Horn of the Moon'' by Vivian Connell, with Jack McNaughton, Denholm Elliott, John Wyse, Pamela Alan, Martin Boddy and Jessie Evans. Directed by Colin Chandler. and ''Dr John Bull'', with John Louis Mansi and others. The building was acquired in 1955 by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. When Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in ''The New York Times'' called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture, ''Un Chien Andalou''—made in the silent era—is still viewed regularly throughout the world and retains its power to shock the viewer, and his last film, ''That Obscure Object of Desire''—made 48 years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel's work "the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci (; 16 March 1941 – 26 November 2018) was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved international acclaim. He was the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director for ''The Last Emperor'' (1987), one of many accolades including two Golden Globes, two David di Donatellos, a British Academy Award, and a César Award. In recognition of his work, he was presented with the inaugural Honorary Palme d'Or Award at the opening ceremony of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. He had previously received a Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival. A protégé of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bertolucci made his directorial debut at 22. His second film, ''Before the Revolution'' (1964), earned strong international reviews and has since gained classic status, being called a "masterpiece of Italian cinema" by Film4. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nagisa Oshima
NaGISA (Natural Geography in Shore Areas or Natural Geography of In-Shore Areas) is an international collaborative effort aimed at inventorying, cataloguing, and monitoring biodiversity of the in-shore area. So named for the Japanese word "nagisa" ("where the land meets the sea"), it is an Apronym. NaGISA is the first project of the larger CoML effort (Census of Marine Life) to have global participation in actual field work. The actual procedures of this project involve inexpensive collection equipment (for easy universal participation). This equipment is used to photograph sampling sites, to actually take samples from the sites, and to process these samples. At each site throughout the world, samples are taken from the intertidal zone out to a depth of 10 meters (and optionally out to 20 meters depth). These samples are then processed (the organisms are isolated) and then analyzed and catalogued. The information (regarding the kind and number of organisms analyzed) is sent to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs of film-making, Ray is celebrated for works including ''The Apu Trilogy'' (1955–1959), ''The Music Room'' (1958), ''The Big City'' (1963) and ''Charulata'' (1964). Ray was born in Calcutta to nonsense rhyme author Sukumar Ray. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent film-making after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica's Italian neorealist film ''Bicycle Thieves'' (1948) during a visit to London. Ray directed 36 films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. Ray's first film, ''Pather Panchali'' (1955) won eleven international prizes, including the inaugural Best Human Document award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. This film, along with ''Aparajito'' (1956) and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miloš Forman
Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman (; ; 18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018) was a Czech and American film director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the United States in 1968. Forman was an important figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave. Film scholars and Czechoslovak authorities saw his 1967 film ''The Firemen's Ball'' as a biting satire on Eastern European Communism. The film was initially shown in theatres in his home country in the more reformist atmosphere of the Prague Spring. However, it was later banned by the Communist government after the invasion by the Warsaw Pact countries in 1968. Forman was subsequently forced to leave Czechoslovakia for the United States, where he continued making films, gaining wider critical and financial success. In 1975, he directed '' One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975) starring Jack Nicholson as a patient in a mental institution. The film received widespread acclaim and was th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. He is known for his unique filmmaking process, such as disregarding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing the cast and crew into similar situations as characters in his films. Herzog started work on his first film ''Herakles'' in 1961, when he was nineteen. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films and documentaries, such as ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' (1972), ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' (1974), '' Heart of Glass'' (1976), '' Stroszek'' (1977), ''Nosferatu the Vampyre'' (1979), ''Fitzcarraldo'' (1982), ''Cobra Verde'' (1987), ''Lessons of Darkness'' (1992), ''Little Dieter Needs to Fly'' (1997), ''My Best Fiend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky ( rus, Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ɐrˈsʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ tɐrˈkofskʲɪj; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Russian filmmaker. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films explore spiritual and metaphysical themes, and are noted for their Slow cinema, slow pacing and long takes, dreamlike visual imagery, and preoccupation with nature and memory. Tarkovsky studied film at Moscow's Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, VGIK under filmmaker Mikhail Romm, and subsequently directed his first five feature film, features in the Soviet Union: ''Ivan's Childhood'' (1962), ''Andrei Rublev (film), Andrei Rublev'' (1966), ''Solaris (1972 film), Solaris'' (1972), ''Mirror (1975 film), Mirror'' (1975), and ''Stalker (1979 film), Stalker'' (1979). A number of his films from this period are ranked among the List of films considered the best, best films ever made. Aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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